Trail Blazers Blog

Texas politicians are for fundamental principles — except when they aren’t

You can count on the Texas Legislature for a biennial object lesson on how politicians face fundamental principles. Let’s call it flexibility. For example, politicos are against big government, except when they’re for it. And they’re for local control, except when they’re against it.

Sex education in schools? A Senate education panel heard details this week on a proposal to forbid anyone associated with Planned Parenthood from teaching sex ed in public schools – even if a local school district wants it. A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood says a handful of local school districts have asked for help from “health educators,” some affiliated with her group. She says they follow the legal protocols, which include promoting abstinence, and don’t use PP literature. But Sen. Ken Paxton, R-McKinney, says that’s not good enough. His bill would have the state bar a local school district, regardless of what it wants, from hiring anyone who belongs to or is in any way associated with Planned Parenthood.

Another hot-button issue – abortion – got much the same big-government treatment from otherwise small-government advocates during the last legislative session. Lawmakers required that all women seeking an abortion undergo a sonogram 24 hours and be presented the image and sound of a heartbeat, if present. Legislators in Austin effectively wrote the script that doctors must recite to patients in the privacy of the physician’s office. Gov. Rick Perry wants even more restrictions on abortion this session. Perry declares himself a friend of small government. He vetoed a bill to outlaw texting while driving, saying big government has no right invading the privacy of individuals and their iPhones in the privacy of their car.

When the new chair of the Texas State Board of Education sat down before the Senate education committee this week, she complained that when it comes to science standards, the state wants local districts to teach “all sides” about evolution. She said a classroom management tool used by many districts failed to present “another side of the theory of evolution.” She said publishers need to “soften” their language in textbooks the board will consider this year. She agrees that when it comes to teaching religious-based theories, that should be a local matter for the church not the state. But her message was clear: the state wants local school districts using science books that have a little more than science in them.

Perhaps the most aggressive big-government intervention in local affairs so far this year is a bill introduced by a freshman legislator, Rep. Drew Springer, R-Muenster, that would overturn an ordinance passed by the Austin City Council banning plastic bags at the grocery store. He called it “a misguided nanny-state agenda” by local elected officials in Austin. To correct it, he wants state elected officials who live mostly somewhere else to overrule it. On the legislative website, Springer touts himself as a small-government guy. His bio says “government has become too large at both a national and state level, overburdening our lives with excessive regulations that destroy our freedoms.”

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The blog for the Dallas Morning News politics team tracks Dallas Fort Worth area, Texas and national campaigns.